Bush Nominates Treasury Official to Tax Post

The U.S. Treasury Department announced that President Bush has nominated Treasury official Eric Solomon to be the department's assistant secretary for tax policy, filling a post that has been vacant since February 2004.

Solomon is currently deputy assistant secretary for tax policy and has worked at the Treasury since October 1999.

Since the departure of Pamela Olson from the job, Bush's initial nominee, Treasury official Greg Jenner, was never confirmed and left the government in December 2004. Bush's second nominee, Philip Morrison, withdrew in October 2005 after seeing the confirmation process drag on for nearly six months.

Treasury Secretary John Snow said that Solomon had played a crucial role over the past five years in the design and implementation of the president's tax cuts.

"Eric would bring extensive private-sector experience to this post, as well as insights garnered at the Internal Revenue Service," said Snow, in a statement. "Eric's significant and varied experience, combined with his passion for protecting the rights of taxpayers, makes him uniquely qualified for this important position."

Previously, Solomon was a partner at Ernst & Young, where he was a member of the mergers & acquisitions group of the National Tax Department in Washington. Before the Big Four firm, he worked at the Internal Revenue Service for five years, serving as corporate assistant chief counsel and overseeing the agency's legal division with responsibility for all corporate tax issues. Before joining the IRS, he practiced tax law in New York, and was a partner at Drinker Biddle & Reath in Philadelphia.